Both Australia and Canada had federal elections last week. Both countries have overwhelmingly urban populations (Australia 87%, Canada 82%) and vast tracts of sparsely populated territory, which means that strictly geographical election maps of both countries suffer from the “empty land doesn’t vote” problem. But that doesn’t seem to stop such maps from being used.
As I posted about the maps of the last Canadian federal election in 2019 (1, 2, 3), most static election maps in Canada use the Lambert projection, whereas online maps generally use Web Mercator; cartograms and such aren’t really a thing. I suspect that this is a combination of the Lambert being very familiar to Canadians (it’s pretty much the default projection for static maps) whereas a cartogram isn’t: it’s easier and less disorienting to use the Lambert with inset maps, or zoom in on Web Mercator. Canadians aren’t dumb: we know that there are lots of seats in and around Toronto and Montreal, and that hardly anyone lives in Nunavut, and even zooming all the way out in Web Mercator won’t fool us. Besides, with four parties capable of winning expansive rural or northern seats, the urban-rural split isn’t quite as binary as it is elsewhere, so the urgency of correcting the map by showing votes or seats—the need to say land doesn’t vote—isn’t quite there.
Maps Mania has a roundup of some media maps of the Canadian election results. Jens von Bergmann crunches the riding-by-riding results with some maps and visualizations—including an animation that morphs between a geographic map and a Dorling cartogram.
Geographic maps also tend to be used for Australian election results, to the point that in 2022 ABC News (the Australian one) ran a piece saying that the election map was lying to you (previously). Once again, Maps Mania has a roundup of Australian election maps this time around: ABC goes full cartogram, using British-style hex maps showing results and vote swing; The Australian sticks with geographical maps; and The Guardian toggles between geographical and “exaggerated” maps that enlarge urban constituencies while maintaining Australia’s overall shape, which I find an interesting compromise.